


I've Got You Back

by BurningTea



Series: Missing You [4]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt Eliot Spencer, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 13:58:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9901733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: When Eliot stumbles home in a state, Aimee thinks at first he's drunk. It turns out to be more of a problem.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tidal_race](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tidal_race/gifts).



> From the prompt 'Things you said when you were drunk', but I pushed it a bit further than being drunk. Sorry, Eliot.

Aimee’s mostly asleep when a noise brings her all the way awake. She only catches the edges of it, the after-image of sound in the darkness. Something like a thud. Maybe a voice.

“Who is it?” she asks, because one of the many things she’s learned while getting to know Eliot again is that wherever the team are calling their base it will carry a higher than average risk of random people appearing. She still isn’t quite over her first meeting with Tara. Eliot still isn’t over her first meeting with Mikel. “Hardison?”

If it isn’t some guest, or an invader, then it’s got to be Hardison. Parker doesn’t knock into things and Eliot’s always been strangely graceful. She thinks for a split second and rules out an invader as well. Not at the Leverage home-base.

“I ain’t Hardison,” a voice hisses from half the room away. 

Okay. So Aimee can be wrong. 

“Eliot?”

She pushes herself form the bed and turns on the bedside lamp, casting the room into a rosy glow. Eliot’s tastes can run to homely and tasteful, however much he claims to be all about rugged, hard-wearing stuff. 

Right now, he’s holding on to the back of a chair that should be several feet to the right, under a desk. His eyes are narrowed and Aimee can’t work out his expression.

“You okay?” she asks. “You been in a fight?”

Eliot turns his head to look at her and she doesn’t see any bruises or cuts. She does see him smile. It doesn’t look quite right.

“Me? Fight?” he asks. And laughs. 

Aimee has no idea what’s meant to be funny about that. 

Then, Eliot lets go of the chair and stumbles closer, and Aimee groans.

“You’re drunk. Eliot, where’ve you been out drinking?”

He doesn’t answer. He does reach out and grab hold of her, almost taking her down to the bed again, but she braces herself and they stay upright. Barely. 

She can’t remember the last time she saw Eliot drunk. Way back before they lost contact, she thinks. Sure, he drinks. He just doesn’t let himself get drunk. This is…different. 

“Hey,” she says, because yelling at him right now will be futile. “Hey, you okay? You need to lie down? Want some water?”

Eliot mumbles something into her hair, or rather into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and Aimee frowns. 

“What? I can’t hear you. Eliot, you got to tell me what you need.”

He lifts his head just enough that this time she feels the air from his lips puff against her.

“Need you,” he says, and drops his head again, this time pressing a kiss to the patch of skin he reaches. It makes her shiver. He turns his head and tries again, just clearly enough she can make him out. “Needed you back then. Shoulda never let you slip away.”

It’s the first time he’s mentioned it, having actual regrets. Aimee knows he must have some, in some way or another, but to hear him say it is different. It hurts.

Not the time. Now is not the time to tell him how much that hurt her. It’s not the time to point out who slipped away, either.

“Can’t go back,” she tells him, and brings herself back to what’s needed in the present. “We need to get you to bed.”

But Eliot shakes his head, almost burrowing into her with the movement and shifting his grip so he’s holding her upper arms. It’s not quite a hug. It feels more like he’s clinging on so she can’t drift away.

“Hey,” she says. “You stop that now.”

“No,” Eliot says, and he sounds sulky, just for a moment, which is far from a standard Eliot emotion. 

“Well, what are the other options?” Aimee asks. “You keep crying on my shoulder?”

And she’s seen Eliot angry and Eliot amused and Eliot bruised and bleeding. Hell, she’s seen him shaking from the aftershocks of nightmares, deep in the dark, in the hours when she waits for him to be calm enough to hold, so it’s not like she’s under some impression Eliot never hurts. She’s just never seen him like this.

“I ain’t crying,” he says. And doesn’t move. 

“Fine. Okay,” Aimee tells him. 

She moves her left hand up and settles it on the back of Eliot’s head, stroking down his hair and curving her fingers round the back of his skull. Somehow, he manages to sink even more fully onto her and Aimee is starting to think she might collapse onto the bed soon, after all.

“Eliot, I can’t-”

He straightens up abruptly, her hand slipping round to the side of his face without her even deciding it should, and takes her other hand in his. 

“We should dance,” he says, apparently entirely serious.

“What?” Aimee asks. 

“Dance,” Eliot says again. “Like we shoulda danced at the wedding.”

Does he mean…? He can’t mean at their wedding. They were never engaged. Not really. Sure, Aimee always took the class ring to be some kind of placeholder, but when Eliot didn’t get around to proposing, and then didn’t around to coming back that last time, she decided she must have been wrong. 

“Whose wedding?” she asks, to be clear.

“At…” He hesitates, and frowns, and seems to be thinking. “At your wedding, Aimee. I shoulda come and danced with you at your wedding. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

Now he does look on the verge of crying. Aimee finds, suddenly and viscerally, that she does not want to see Eliot Spencer cry. 

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “That’s long past.”

“We could dance now,” Eliot says. “I can put some music on, and we can dance.”

He moves to pull away, but Aimee tightens her grip on his hand and strokes a thumb along his cheek. He stills.

“Hey,” she says. “You wanna dance, we can dance. Tomorrow. When you’re sober. Okay? Right now, maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about my wedding and you not being there.”

“I’d have been there if I could,” he says. “I promise. I wasn’t choosing not to come back.”

“You were working,” Aimee says, nodding to show she gets it. They’ve had this conversation and, for the sake of what they’re building now, she’s put it behind her. Eliot dragging it back up isn’t helping any. “So you couldn’t be there.”

For months. No. She isn’t going back to that again. 

“I was being interrogated,” Eliot says, quietly. All of a sudden, he doesn’t seem to be looking at her. It’s the most he’s ever said about it, and he sounds like he means it. “Wouldn’t tell them where it was, so they kept…asking.”

Aimee never wants to know what’s hiding in that pause. 

“You were, what, a prisoner of war?” she asks. 

Eliot’s brow furrows, but he still sounds mostly distant when he speaks.

“Something like that,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t come back. By the time I got free, I figured it was too late.”

He draws to a halt and Aimee knows that if she ever wants a straight answer, or as much of one as a drunk man can give, she should ask more questions now. But Eliot guards his history closely, doling out stories when he thinks they will shock or amuse. He doesn’t sit around spilling details of everything he’s suffered, and although it frustrates Aimee to know there’s an ocean she doesn’t know about this man she loves, she won’t take that from him.

“Well, you’re here now,” she says. “It’s not too late. Okay? And we can dance tomorrow, if you still want to. Let’s get you some sleep, okay?”

He’s still frowning, and now Aimee feels the trembling through his whole frame. She isn’t sure he’s hearing her at all anymore.

“Eliot? You with me?”

Eliot goes down so quickly Aimee fumbles and misses him, and he crashes into the dresser nearby, sending everything on it tumbling. Aimee’s shout is louder.

By the time Hardison and Parker burst into the room, Aimee’s already checking Eliot’s pulse and his eyes.

“What the…?” Hardison asks. “You guys get in a fight?”

Aimee ignores that. It’s just Hardison joking, badly, when he’s faced with something that might mean one of his people is hurt. Aimee’s noticed lately that seems to include her. Right now, she has other things to worry about than whether Hardison chooses the best times for weak jokes.

“Thought he’d come home drunk, but it must have been a lot if so,” she says.

His pupils don’t look right. She’s seen drunk people. Hell, she’s seen drunks. But Eliot’s pupils aren’t right for that, and his breathing is off. He’s sweaty, clammy, and still trembling. 

“I don’t see Eliot drinking enough to pass out,” Hardison says, and it sounds like agreement with every dark thought going through Aimee’s head. “Already calling someone.”

He doesn’t make a call, but he has his phone in his hand, and Aimee knows he can summon a whole slew of people with that. No way will Hardison stint on getting in someone decent for Eliot, so she takes to stroking his hair and watching him, and waiting.

***

The doctor sits back on her heels and shakes her head.

“Some kind of poison,” she says. “I’m going to need a lot more to go on, here. Hardison-”

“He was out at some bar the other end of town, but I don’t know why,” Hardison says, sharing a glance with Aimee. “Parker and Tara are checking it out.”

Aimee bites her lip. She knows Hardison is worried about Parker, and Tara, although Aimee isn’t sure why anyone ever needs to worry about Tara. Then again, she supposes a lot of people think that about Eliot. Still, it’s a good thing Tara is back in town. 

Nate and Sophie are on their way, and Aimee doesn’t want to think about what that means. They didn’t even fly in when they lost contact with Hardison on a con a few months back, and had a heart-stopping few hours where they thought he might be gone. Sophie and Nate were on comms the entire time, but they didn’t fly in. Now, they’ve booked the first flight. Well, they’re on the first flight. Aimee isn’t sure booking was involved.

“I’ve seen people react like this,” the doctor says. Aimee really should have paid attention to her name. She isn’t the one they’ve used before, but Hardison muttered something about expertise in drugs, the inflection in his voice making that into something that most certainly did not mean cold medication. “It could be one of a few things used to get people talking, or something meant to put people out of commission. Some do both. But it can be caused by a number of things, and if we get the wrong one…”

She shakes her head again and Aimee very deliberately does not reach over and hit her. 

“Worse case scenario?” Hardison asks. 

He’s got the look on his face Aimee really hates, the one that says even Hardison is now past joking. He’s also got his head tilted in the way that means he’s listening to Parker on comms. Probably Tara, as well. Aimee refused to put her ear bud in - all of her focus has narrowed down to the still form on the bed.

The doctor blinks.

“Death,” she says. “In all bar four of the cases I’m thinking we have here, he dies. Another one leaves him in a state where… Well. A lot can be done these days, but I can’t see Mr Spencer finding it… Do you want the details?”

“Later. If we need them,” Hardison says. “There antidotes for all of them?”

The doctor shakes her head. 

“Three of them have antidotes I can actually get in him in time to save him, maybe. If we find out which one soon, and I mean real soon. The others? You really want to know the odds?”

She looks sad enough about it that Aimee can see the woman’s developed a soft spot for the team. Aimee can sympathize. It didn’t take long, that first time she met them, to find herself feeling affectionate. And that was even with her emotions all over the place about seeing Eliot again.

“Parker, tell me you got something, girl,” Hardison says, instead of answering. 

Aimee knows, if it comes to it, if Eliot is facing some kind of permanent harm but pulls through, Hardison will move Heaven, Earth and quite possibly a large chunk of Hell to get Eliot the best care he can have, but she understands why he doesn’t want to hear it this second. This second, when they could still find which drug, which poison, and when it could still be one of the three that can be cured, isn’t the time to think about the worse cases. She still clings to the hope it’s one where he can pull through without an antidote, but wishing for the best case scenario is so often a fool’s game. It certainly can’t be relied on.

Aimee’s been there, and stood with other people who’ve had to face it, when a horse has gone down and there’s a hard call to be made. She knows that worming feeling of hope, of desperation, that it isn’t as bad as it seems. She knows how it can be, wanting to stay in the moment before some line is crossed in the universe and it stops being something that can be saved.

“You gotta have something,” Hardison says. “I… Hang on.”

He throws a look at Aimee, who nods. She isn’t really sure what he’s asking, but just now she doesn’t have it in her to take part. If she had to, she’d take care of it. Hell, she’s taken care of Eliot before. That time he turned up at her place with a knife wound, for one. But for this? The team are better left to get on with it. 

Besides, fear is slowly threading itself through her and pulling tight. 

As Hardison leaves, his voice picking up again as soon as he’s outside, Aimee moves closer to the bed. The doctor stands, reaching a hand to Aimee and taking hold of her elbow. She speaks in a low voice, almost soft. Aimee wants to tell her to stop it, that she can handle being spoken to normally. She can’t make the words crawl out of her throat.

“We don’t know yet,” the doctor says. “But, if you have anything you’ve been meaning to say…”

Aimee nods. She isn’t sure what else she can do. 

Finally, the doctor lets go and follows Hardison out of the room, and Aimee stares down at Eliot. For the longest time she thought she’d never see him again, and then she did, and she thought that was just a line drawn under a love she never quite managed to let go of. 

And then he came back. 

“You can’t die on me, now,” she says. She finds she has her arms wrapped around her own middle, her shoulders hunched. There’s a pressure behind her eyes and in her throat that she can’t give in to, because Eliot is still here and he needs her to be strong. Aimee has made a life out of being strong. “Do you hear me? You don’t get to leave me again. Not like this. Not now I’ve got you back.”

Eliot doesn’t move.

With his eyes shut and his body still, even with the trembling so fine now it can barely be seen from even a few feet away, Eliot doesn’t look as tough and as…as imposing as he normally does. He looks vulnerable. 

Aimee feels her mouth work and has to take a long, steadying breath. No crying. Not now. Crying can be later, if… No. No crying.

Instead, she unfolds her arms and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, waiting until she’s sure she’s got it under control. 

Eliot’s just as quiet when she looks at him again. 

All of a sudden, being this far away, when they already spent so many years far apart, is too much. Aimee moves, crawling up onto the bed and stretching out by Eliot’s side, curling protectively over him. She strokes his hair back from his face and feels how warm he is, how clammy. She swallows.

“Hey,” she says. “You can’t go yet. You’ve come through worse than this, Eliot. You might not talk about it much, but I know enough. You aren’t going to let this beat you, you hear? And besides, you still owe me that dance.”

And she puts her head down on his shoulder and absolutely does not cry.

***

Aimee hears the sounds of people arriving. She hears Sophie’s voice lifted up in what must be real emotion, and she hears Nate, by the sounds of it taking control. 

She considers going out to see them, but even when the doctor comes back in at intervals to check on Eliot, looking grimmer and grimmer each time, Aimee doesn’t move. 

If this is it, she’s going to be right here next to Eliot when he goes. 

She keeps reminding him that had better just be her getting sentimental, and that he shouldn’t be going anywhere, but each time she’s less sure he hears her.

***

Sophie appears next to the bed, her eyes soft and pained, and asks if Aimee needs anything. Aimee sees the way Sophie’s gaze travels to Eliot, and she almost asks if Sophie wants some time alone with him. Almost. 

But Sophie just takes Eliot’s hand for a minute, kneeling on the floor next to the bed and murmuring to him that he promised, that she meant he should care for himself as well, and then leaves Aimee to the sounds of Eliot’s labored breathing.

Even though Aimee never said she wanted one, the next time Sophie comes in, she brings tea and leaves it on the nightstand.

“Just in case,” Sophie says, and this time she doesn’t look at Eliot at all.

***

At one point, she hears the doctor and Hardison talking near the doorway, and Hardison is quoting medical facts and babbling ideas that tell Aimee the guy’s been trying to cram years’ worth of learning into a few hours. The doctor doesn’t brush him off, but she doesn’t arrive and tell Aimee to move so they can try a cure, either. 

***

The whoop from the other room brings Aimee upright. At least, upright enough that she curls around Eliot, propped up on one elbow so her hair swings over him, and stares at the door.

She’s filled with an irrational sense she needs to defend him, even though she knows the danger is already in his body and no-one on the team would let further harm come through that door at him.

When Parker appears, her face set in that tight, fierce way she has on missions, Aimee forces herself to uncurl. If Parker is surprised to see Aimee where she is, she doesn’t say anything. She does frown, her lips pressing even tighter together. 

“Have you…?” Aimee asks, when Parker doesn’t say anything. 

“Hardison and Doc Kerry are getting the antidote ready,” Parker says. “Twenty-five percent chance we’re in time, if it’s the one we think.”

“And if it’s not?” Aimee asks. 

Parker shrugs, but Aimee knows Parker well enough by now to know she’s upset. Upset, but in mission mode and not ready to show it. 

The doctor follows Parker only a minute or so later. By this point, time is stretched and thin, and Aimee isn’t sure she trusts any of her senses, but she does feel the tension in the way the doctor moves. She’s professional, and she’s brisk, but there’s a nervous energy there that Aimee really wishes she wasn’t aware of. 

She helps the doctor adjust Eliot so the antidote can be got into him, and she ends up sitting up with her back to the headboard and Eliot resting against her chest, his team almost filling the room, as they wait to see if it’ll work. 

If it doesn’t, Aimee lets herself think, she at least won’t be alone. She knows it. 

She also knows that’s a lie, in so many ways that count. 

***

When Eliot opens his eyes, he looks puzzled. 

“What are you all staring at me for?” he asks, his voice rasping. 

It’s evening, the light filtering red-tinted into the room through the blinds, and everyone is tired. Aimee sees it on their faces and in the way their bodies are slumped, just as surely as she feels it in her own bones. She’s so drained she feels like the sinews and muscles might comes detached and she might unravel here, on the bed, next to Eliot. 

Even with everyone waiting to see him wake up, she hasn’t moved. 

“Never seen you get that drunk, man,” Hardison says, and his voice only breaks a little on the words.

Eliot tries to argue, and Aimee tries to laugh, and if she holds him a little tightly in her arms, or presses a kiss to his hair that he tries to protest in front of everyone, she thinks she can be forgiven that. Form the way Sophie nods at her, Aimee knows her new family understand. 

Parker won’t come near the bed, but she informs Eliot he’s to stay in bed until he’s cleared before she vanishes from the room, Hardison following a few minutes later. The two of them will work through what they’re feeling and at some point soon there’ll be a sign to Eliot that he’s loved. Aimee will look forward to it just as soon as she’s had some sleep. 

The doctor stays only long enough to check Eliot over, ignoring his complaints with a skill that tells Aimee they need to keep this woman on speed-dial, and Tara tells Eliot he should learn to hold his drink before she waltzes out.

“I wasn’t drunk,” Eliot says, scowling. 

It’s probably meant to be a scowl, anyway. He doesn’t quite seem to have the energy.

“Of course you weren’t,” Sophie says. “But stick to water for a while. Just in case.”

Nate is the last one left, other than Aimee, and he takes a bit longer to work himself up to speaking. The shared agreement that Eliot was drunk is dropped as Nate talks, but Aimee has the feeling this might be the only time it’s ever mentioned by him.

“You had us worried there for a while,” Nate says. “You know, Sophie and I might not be around all the time these days, but we still consider you family. Try not to get poisoned again, okay?”

Aimee feels Eliot go still, then nod slowly. He doesn’t say anything, but Nate doesn’t seem to expect it. 

And then, at last, it’s just Aimee and Eliot in the room, the way it should have been the night before, without whatever was making Eliot act the way he was. 

“You been here the whole time?” he asks at last, his tone different now it’s just the two of them.

Aimee strokes a hand along one of his arms and nods.

“Yeah. Someone had to make sure you kept breathing. You weren’t doing a great job of it by yourself.”

Eliot falls silent for a while, before he shifts, clearly uncomfortable after so long lying on the bed. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You were poisoned,” Aimee tells him. “Kinda hard to hold you accountable.”

“I, er, I remember some of it,” Eliot says. “I remember…telling you some things.”

“You told me why you didn’t come back,” Aimee says. “But you don’t have to say any more about it. It’s in the past. We’re not in the past now.”

“Doesn’t stop it hurting sometimes, though, does it?” Eliot asks. 

Aimee’s not going to take advantage of Eliot feeling strange and maudlin after nearly dying. He’s probably still got something addling his system at this point. She does agree, of course she does, but now isn’t the time to get into it. Maybe there isn’t a time to get into it, not if they want to keep moving forward, but that’s something she can think about, now they have time again.

“Hey,” she says. “You’re right here now, and so am I.” And she’s had quite enough of worrying, and of feeling sad. “Besides, I mean to hold you to your offer.”

“What offer?” Eliot asks. 

Aimee smiles for what feels like the first time in forever, even though it’s been less than a day, her lips curving against Eliot’s hair. 

“You said you wanted to dance, like we would have done at the wedding,” she says. “And soon as you’re well enough, that’s what we’ll do.”

“What?” Eliot asks. “What wedding?”

Aimee laughs, and kisses his hair, and laughs again.


End file.
